Fear Death By Blather

David Brooks, "A Date With Scarcity". November 3

I WAS pretty much minding my own business this AM. I'm a seasoned charlatan. I have no need to get all excited about an election twelve hours before the returns start coming in. Truth be told, you can wake me when the election, not the balloting, shows some results, but that's just me. If most people didn't enjoy spectacles we'd be subjected to thirty minutes of news every night, and no one wants that.

I clicked on the Times, and--it's one of the dangers of the middle-aged brain, to which we will be returning--the autopilot took over, and the next thing I knew I was reading David Brooks. And Brooks has decided--the word may give false credit for what was actually an acute spasm or a dancing tic--that our poise at the edge of momentous electoral change was a fine excuse for him to reveal damn near everything pathetic and regrettable about the inside of his own skull.

In the past two decades, the United States has become a much more interesting place. Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Crate & Barrel, Microsoft and many others enlivened daily life. Private citizens, especially young people, repaired the social fabric, dedicated themselves to community service and lowered drug addiction and teenage pregnancy.

This is The New York Times, fer chrissakes. Do you know anybody who thinks like this? Have a relative, a neighbor, a co-worker who believes Microfuckingsoft has "enlivened" his life (in that very special way that only Mass Marketers Of Other People's Better Ideas can do) ? Do you know anyone who would actually talk like this, unless he'd scored a luncheon speaking gig with the Greater Ottumwa Jaycees and really, I mean really, enjoys chicken à la king?

I'm pretty sure I've never made this explicit, but aside from the fact that The Newspaper of Record decided one day to recruit an "entrepreneur" for the Right-wing kiosk it set up as a replacement for the brick, mortar, and sacks of shit edifice that was Bill Safir(e), and somehow came up with David Brooks, there are essentially two interesting things about the man. The first is that adolescent Reaganaut vibe he shares with, among others, Jonah Goldberg and Professor Reynolds, the result of their having been convinced that Privilege, Self-Absorption, and a Fondness for Mass-Produced Mayonnaise is what made America great, and what would, eventually, see to it that those pot-smoking hippies who laughed at their cool robot sketches would Get What Was Coming To 'Em. The combination of this attitude with their passing into the vortex of Middle Age has not been at all pretty. They're trapped.  It's as if Sonny Bono had been forced to wear that vest the rest of his performing life. The second is Brook's ability to craft an I'm George Will, Too, Only Updated persona, which trades on a certain, oh, lack of physicality, that Mater Wouldn't Allow Me To Hurly-Burly With The Other Lads, But I'm The Superior Intellect For It routine which has been conveniently, but wrongly, construed as Gentlemanliness. Like Will, this has allowed Brooks to fling feces for decades while being presented on national teevee and in the nation's premier despoilers of timberland as respected. It's interesting that both became Affirmative Action Nerd hires in the mass-market media (Will to ABC via Newsweek, Brooks to NPR and the Gray Lady); it's interesting that with each progressively fuzzier Xerox of William FuhBuckley the clothing gets better. Marginally.

Nov. 4, 2008, is a historic day because it marks the end of an economic era, a political era and a generational era all at once.

Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968. For the past 16 years, baby boomers, who were formed by the tumult of the 1960s, occupied the White House. By Tuesday night, if the polls are to be believed, a member of a new generation will become president-elect.

Jesus Christ, could the Times at least require its sparkling little band of hallucinatory columnists to show their work, or at least just point at the Cloud Pony that gave them the idea? First, for the record, the "Long Boom" of 1983 was interrupted, some of us are not allergic to recalling, by The Worst Recession in Post-War History, and has been booming along since Bush took office only if you think charts and pie graphs are more important than what happens to actual Americans. Second, in contemporary usage "Baby Boomer" is generally considered to refer to those born between 1946 and 1964. Meaning it would include Barack Obama, and, for that matter, David Brooks. I don't care if you want to tinker with the numbers; just fucking spit it out, or quit using that insulting Boomer stereotype shit whenever you imagine it benefits you in some way. I was born at the tail end of 1953, roughly 35% of the way into the Boom. I'm closer in age to Barack Obama than to George W. Bush. I'm closer to Bill Clinton by two months.

Barack Obama is a child of the 1960s. His mother was born only five years earlier than Hillary Clinton. For people in Obama’s generation, the great disruption had already occurred by the time they hit adulthood. Theirs is a generation of consolidation and neo-traditionalism — a generation of sunscreen and bicycle helmets, more anxious about parenthood than anything else.

Yeah, Hillary Clinton totally could have given birth to Barack Obama, if she'd gotten pregnant two months after her thirteenth birthday. That's an age bracket where "only five years" makes a huge different, Mr. Brooks. As in "jail time".

Lemme say this, Dave. This number fixation is a sign of old age; learn to fight it. It's a fine divertimento, but a horrible ring opera. Barack Obama was six years old when Martin Luther King was shot. I was six when John Kennedy was driven down 16th Street in Speedway, Indiana, (in an open-top convertible) and I remember it pretty well. Obama was in his early teens when the United States exited Vietnam and Nixon exited the Presidency. He may or may not have been interested then, but it's not as if those are events he should be unable to place in historical context now. Just because your own early adulthood coincided with the political ascendency of Ronald Reagan, and just because you decided, or were hoodwinked into believing, that this Saved the Republic from the Great Disruption does not make it everyone's political biography. I have certainly got my differences with the way Obama has presented the history of this era during his campaign (i.e. as something of the politically-motivated hornswoggle your party presented in an effort to erase reality), but the idea that he grew up in some sort of safety-helmeted, mulatto-toleratin', GameBoy-playin' Consumer Paradise while the "real" Boomers were "consumed by culture war" or trying to figure out the clocks on their VCRs is just your Republican fantasy, Dave. Whatever else he's gotten wrong about the era of his childhood, I'm betting it doesn't include imagining that racial politics in this country is just something the Children of the Sixties dreamed up in order to have something to argue about.

Yet, at the same time, the public sphere has not flourished. Despite decades of affluence, longstanding issues like health care, education, energy and entitlement debt have not been adequately addressed. The baby boomers, who entered adulthood promising a lifetime of activism, have been a politically undistinguished generation. They produced two presidents, neither of whom lived up to his potential. They remained consumed by the culture war that divided their generation. They pass their political supremacy today having squandered the fat years and the golden opportunities.

Okay. It's beyond me, purely and simply, to understand how or why this sort of thing continues unexamined among Brooks and his ilk. Now they decry the Culture War? It's what brought them to power, kept them in power, and what--when a quarter-century of lip service would no longer suffice to keep the religious wing placated--eventually fractured the party. Without a doubt there are culture war matters where I enjoy seeing the Right take jab after jab on the chin, but they're not generally matters of my own choosing; if the whackjobs the GOP aligned itself with with Nixon's Silent Majority Speech and Reagan's Kick-off Salute To Racial Terrorism had simply accepted the fact that the 20th century had arrived and left them in the dirt it could all have been avoided. I don't think many biologists relish spending time defending the principles of 19th century science to small-town school boards. If you'd just acknowledge that the Constitutional right to reproductive freedom was decided in 1973, and leave all further decisions in the hands of those directly involved, we could move on. Leave me alone while I'm watching porn, and I'll leave you alone while you're watching Rod Paisley. Then we can see who gets better ratings, if you like, just in case some daily lives need more enlivening than $6 cappuccino and $12 dish towels can provide. This culture war shit is your baggage, and you couldn't even eliminate it from your own party. And I notice a lot of it still going on forty years after the Great Disruptive Boomer Takeover. Must be a few youngsters opposed to gay marriage, huh?

Why does this continue? Money can't explain it; at this point Brooks could pretty much crank out scholarly monographs sliced into 800-word chunks and keep his paying gigs. Politics no longer explains it; his side's about to lose that one, too, and though it might effect a reversal at some point it'll have to be justified in some entirely different fashion. This leaves us, among the known human motivators for non-waterboarded proclamations of blatantly self-contradictory nonsense stubbornly clung to for decades with: a) Religion; b) Embarrassment; and c) Sex.

Own up, Mr. Brooks. We don't think you're all that religious.

Pass

"If Obama wins, he won’t have an ideological mandate. Reagan could blame his predecessor for most of the nation’s problems in 1981 far more legitimately than Obama will be able to in 2009, especially now that Iraq war has taken such a positive turn. "

--John H. Taylor, "Richard Nixon's chief of staff from 1984-90"

"SoHo is now a shopping centre. And so is Paris. You wouldn't go to Paris to learn anything about music or movies in the way I did. You'd go there to shop."

--Philip Glass

Bill Kristol, "I Am Marie of Roumania, Tra-la, Tra-lay". November 3

George Eff Will, "Manifold Historical Minutia Which Would Extenuate Obama's Ostensive Victory, Just As My Insouciant Bow-tie Has Mocked The Evanescent Gauds of Masculine Fashion Lo These Many Years". November 2

Glenn Greenwald, "God these people are dicks. Stupid dicks." November 2

TODAY'S quest began with a weekend comment (at Roy's ) from Susan of Texas, seconded by Michael Harrington, concerning mentioning the word "mandate" as frequently as physically possible over the next four years. Adds Mr. Herrington, "I remember 1984-86 and I'm ready for some motherfuckin' payback" [emphasis in original].  This, then, would be the second bit of proof that Mr. Herrington is not the same Michael Harrington whose appearances on Firing Line almost made up for William FuhBuckley: because the latter is dead, and because he'd remember the Same Mandate Shit, Different Election from 1980.

Along the way we found this from Kevin Drum, just in time to set a new personal standard for links in a single post, which suggested that the waxworks at ABC This Week predicted an Obama landslide, large-scale Democratic gains in both the House and the Senate, and a subsequent move to the right by both parties (Republicans, because that'll be all that's left, and Democrats, because the new seat gains will come from moderate and Republican areas).

So before we ask whether that's accurate, let's ask ourselves Who th' fuck are these people, and why do they define American politics for the teevee networks? Ever the optimist, I first tried to find the video while simultaneously avoiding ABC's web site. My quixotism was rewarded with a view of Last Week's panel: Will, Cokie, Sam, and Peggy Noonan. Aren't at least two of those people technically deceased? Can someone point me to the ABC news exec who thinks that panel offers something? Or who imagines that, with a bridge club like Will, Roberts, Donaldson, and Stephy on hand, there's anything which might possibly come out of Peggy's mouth, other than last night's Jack and Cokes, which isn't already covered?

This at least got me to run screaming to yesterday's video, and the comparative early peas of Will, Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, and Mark Halperin. Now first, before I forget it, Halperin, it wasn't Yogi Berra who said, "It's very difficult to predict. Especially the future." It was noted banjo-hitter and utility infielder Enrico Fermi. Yogi said, "You can observe a lot just by looking," which you might take into consideration, since, for one thing, he might not have to keep reminding people he didn't really say all the things he said.

Donna Brazile. Listen, fine, she's as entitled to moisten a seat at these snoozefests as anyone else, but that's the point. Have you ever heard a word come out of her mouth that would make a difference about anything? Another battle of the Fucking Former Strategists. Seismic. And balanced by Mark Halperin.

I know we've been over this before, but is there no way your panel could be made to resemble, even slightly, the electorate you're analyzing? Nobody's young, nobody's living paycheck-to-paycheck, nobody can even remember having done so, or ever spoken for people who do. Hell, in two weeks, with an ideological range running from mild and moderate Democrat (one) to High Church Royalist, you can't even find a Palin supporter. Two weeks, ten people, three females, one African-American, who is also one of the females--as the historic election of America's first black muslim syndicalist draws nigh!--while all the rest qualify as the natural constituency (but not the unpleasant backwoods snake-handling wing, oh no!) of the Wealthy White People's party. There's no room at the table for Joe Conason? None for Glenn Greenwald, who might dangerously remember "Dean" Broder opining, just a year ago, that Bush could be on his way back (and who might then recall the Dean was echoing...Mark Halperin)?

Anyway, anyone who's surprised to hear a flight of teevee pundits predict that the collapse of the most ideological right-wing administration in modern history, (taking much of the country along for the ride) would lead to both major parties moving rightward has simply not been paying attention.

As for the mandate stuff, well, I'm not only old enough to remember how it was tossed around in 1980--in precisely the way the GOP's Federalist forebears had used the Alien and Sedition Acts--I'm still just functional enough to recall the Bush camp using the term in December, '00, after losing the election.  Under the circumstances (that is, since words presently mean nothing whatsoever in politics), we shall see whether it's worth it to revive the argument to prop up the Democratic party (A Mandate for Moderation!). But then it's been clear for two years now that there's a mandate to replace the most incompetent and reviled administration in history, and that means eradicating anything remotely resembling its legacy. I know actual socialism as defined by actual people with actual undamaged thinking is out of the question, but how 'bout expanding the Court again? (If you made it thirteen that'd be one for each Circuit.) I suppose, also, that time will tell whether an overwhelming voter turnout, and participation via contributions and voluteerism, can be flushed down the toilet with impunity in 2009 the way the Democrats ignored the mandate to stop the war in 2007. It's not like I expect 'em to be asking that question on This Week or anything.

And the Trail of the Mandate took me to the Republican Mouthpiece response, where, with utter repudiation looming, the tactic of last resort is to dress the whole thing up in clown nose and rainbow wig. Kristol demonstrates, once again, that the competition for Most Hallucinatory Times Columnist is not quite the MoDo runaway it might appear:

Barack Obama will probably win the 2008 presidential election. If he does, we conservatives will greet the news with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism.

And Will reassures us that the more Change changes, the more closely it resembles the doubletalk of the Golden Age of Reagan:

Coloradans and Nebraskans will vote Tuesday on measures to ban government-administered racial preferences in public employment, public education and public contracting. Voters have emphatically passed such measures in California (1996), Washington (1998) and Michigan (2006). If Colorado and Nebraska pass those measures, that will be evidence -- not counter to, but in addition to, the Obama candidacy -- that Americans are eager to put racial politics behind them.

Which reminds us: George Eff Will was an Affirmative Action hire for ABC in 1980. Aren't we overdue for a new one?

Punk Bonzai #16

UPDATE: So, I knew that earlier Punk Bonzai posts didn't have labels, since they pre-dated labeling in Blogger and I've been too lazy to go back and catch everything up, so I went to do that and discovered that earlier pics had been posted to my old host and weren't there anymore. And then I discovered they weren't on my present array of hard drives, either, which is somewhat surprising since I've kept every scrap of paper that's ever crossed my hands. They were on an old machine, so I dug 'em out, but by that time it seemed to make more sense to just repost 'em. 

Punk Bonzai #1: Meadow Sage (Dharma for Cows):



Notable as the first Punk Bonzai, for the absence of anything resembling a tree, and for the fact that my Poor Wife, thrilled at finding a bag of plastic cows, but somewhat disconcerted by the color combination of White and An Orange Not Found In Nature, Possibly Originating as One of Bill Gates' Shirt-Sock Combinations in High School, sanded and re-painted them all as Holsteins. 

Punk Bonzai #4: Last Prom (This Accident Could Have Been Prevented):

I never got the shot right; you can barely make out the driver on the hood, or his nearby date's skirt and matching shoes pointing upwards, and I think the paramedic is actually a milkman. My wife refuses to prune that oddball root thing. Pics of PB7: Funeral (Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts), which took advantage of a juniper that drowned and some HO scale earthmoving equipment, are missing and can't be recreated until I kill something else, and Indianapolis Power and Light remains a virtual work, since I can't bring myself to hack a V into an innocent tree just for a joke.

Joe The Stand-Up Comedian

Times:

“All right guys, I didn’t prepare anything,” Mr. Wurzelbacher said at a rally at the Washington Park gazebo in Sandusky. “The only thing I’ve been saying is just get out and get informed. I mean, really know what you’re talking about when you’re talking about it. Don’t take everyone’s opinions. I came to my own opinions by research. Get involved in the government. That way we can hold our politicians accountable and take back our government. It’s all ours.”

Can't compete. Have a good weekend.

Incuriouser and Incuriouser

In the mid-1940s, with budgets tight, the new head of production at Universal Studios decided to change its image towards more "prestige" films. To this end he revived a deal with the J. Arthur Rank Organisation--which had fallen apart just a couple years before when the films were poorly received--to import high-toned British productions.

At lunch one day a group of contract writers and producers were complaining about how their budgets were being cut while the studio spent money to import films such as The Tawny Pipit.

Nunnally Johnson told them they had it all wrong. "That picture's going to be a big money maker," he said. "Why, every lover of pipits in the country will be lined up to see it."

WHICH reminds me: Tina Brown has a new website. It's the one to which drifts of undecided voters flocked to find out who Chris Buckley was endorsing. Don't expect any linkage. I bring it up only because the gang at the XX Factor found an essay there by former Ms editor Elaine Lafferty claiming Sarah Palin is "very smart". Don't expect any linkage. (The egregious headline says "Brainiac", leading us to suspect that Brown's new Dog and Pony operation is so small she's doing all the editing herself. Both the sub-head and the body attempt to add heft by announcing Ms Lafferty's Democratic party affiliation, which suggests that some people operating Big Effing Deal Web Rollouts are actually not aware of all internet traditions. Her self-description comes right before she announces she's working with the McCain campaign, which, oddly, isn't supposed to affect the sort of person who might be persuaded by the piece.)

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

So by "smart" you don't mean what most of us think of when we hear the word--some big, strapping Buck who's overpaid and overpraised for his ability to catch a ball? Lemme just take a moment to get my head around that concept; "smart" and "dribbling" have always gone hand-in-hand for me. Okay. You mean she's "smart" like $100K worth of designer duds from Saks, right?

Okay, sorry. I know that was like shooting fish on bicycles in a barrel.

And this, in turn leads Meghan O'Rourke to grab the wrong end of the stick and start thrashing around her personal life for something to connect with (in fairness, this is apparently something which does not actually require a stimulus):

Does it matter whether Palin is a feminist or not? Isn't it possible that she could be a net benefit for feminism without being one? I, too, am bothered by Palin's politics on a number of women-related issues, from abortion to abstinence-only sex ed. But before I go to the "she's terrible for feminism" place, I think of two 9-year-old girls I know, and I try to see this from their perspective. This is the first election they're really going to remember. And what they'll remember is that Hillary Clinton very nearly was the Democratic presidential candidate and that Sarah Palin was a dynamic, funny, personable VP candidate.

Your lips to God's ears, Meghan. How well I remember my own youth, when Barry Goldwater (our only Jewish presidential candidate) tabbed William E. Miller (the only Catholic ever to run on a Republican national ticket) and the result taught me so much about tolerance.

Really. When you start saying things like "It could be a net plus for Feminism if the children of today were to grow up realizing that a powerful woman could enforce the Bronze Age moral codes that treat them as chattel" it's time to ask yourself: 1) how you got here and 2) how you get back out.

What had brought me to this magnetic storm of cerebral events was my search for the new script addition, the one which insists that Councilwoman Palin is, in fact, highly skilled, competent, and intelligent, despite all evidence to the contrary. This is not the Misunderestimation Ploy of the hardline Right, but, rather, a sort of public plea for mercy, a hesitation about piling on, from people who either have paid no attention to what's actually been coming out of her mouth, who have conveniently developed temporal global amnesia about the Bush administration and the Republican party generally, or who were smitten with her SNL appearance. O'Rourke obliges:

No doubt Palin is smart; but what troubles a lot of voters is whether she's intellectually curious and whether she's open to debate and advice.

I'm sorry, but when did intellectual curiosity become optional equipment? I don't expect it in That Bagger at Marsh, not because he's a bagger, but because he was obviously dropped on his head at an early age. He's not running for office, that I know of. "Intellectual curiosity" is not the same thing as being intellectual, or being an academic, or a pointy-headed elitist; it's the minimum requirement for acceptance into public discourse, among other things. I don't think anyone is asking Sarah Palin to descant on Proust. Sure, she's proven herself smart enough to be a sleezy politician, and to hold wingnut audiences in thrall--in much the same way that crowds at those Bob Hope USO shows thought Loni Anderson was a consummate entertainer--how is anyone supposed to evaluate those positions when she cannot defend holding them? That isn't a question of intellectual curiosity, it's a question of intellectual honesty.

Look, it may be that if one wants to continue as a well-paid editor for national publications one is required, at times, to pretend one knows, appreciates, and has a deep affection for, the sort of Middle American stereotype one uses as a replacement for ever having to dine with those people on their home Surf n Turf. Far smarter people than I subscribe to all of the World's religions; but that doesn't make someone who says Creationism should be taught in public schools smart. Whether it's St. Reagan, Bush the Dumber, or Sarah the Could-Be Feminist, it makes them, not intellectually incurious, but publicly stupid, either because they really are that stupid, or because they pretend to be as a vote-harvesting ploy. Which is worse? Why should we accept any excuses?

I'm sorry, but, we know, y'know? There's no great mystery as to why Sarah Palin has come across so poorly whenever she's not reading a script. She's not that bright. She may be able to work a crossword puzzle, she may be blessed with more native intelligence than average, she may be able to ace the job interview, before you look at her Wonderlic scores.  But she's not running for weekend sports anchor.  We watch her with Katie Couric and we know. People who have real lives deal with that sort of question practically every day, and if they can't tell chicken liver from chicken shit they either die when their Ford Aspire spontaneously combusts or are crushed to death under mounds of magazines they bought from itinerant subscription salesmen.  We know. Nabokov couldn't speak extemporaneously, either, and no one asks about his intellectual curiosity. The excuses come out when it's Reagan, or Bush, or someone we agree with politically or protect with faux balance. And look where that's gotten us.

Haven't We Been Over This Before?

Walter Shapiro, "How John McCain ran against himself". October 29

All that would have been required to achieve electoral parity and a plausible road map to the White House would have been for the Republican nominee to have transformed himself into ... (Warning: Mind-bending content ahead) ... the John McCain of the 2000 primaries.

WOW, thanks for the warning, Walter. For a minute there it was like I was on another one of those Maverick-induced Magic Carpet rides, and everything went all Lava-lampy an' stuff. If I hadn't been prepared my mind might'a bent and stayed like that.

Maverick! All I can figure at this point is that they had really, really good doughnuts on the Press bus in '00. Eight years later, and four years after McCain knelt and kissed George W.'s ring, ten months into a presidential campaign remarkable--even among presidential campaigns--for its intelligence-insulting, content-free, listless meanderings, John McCain can still evoke the same sort of pastel reveries as the first girl who let you reach under her sweater. Haven't we been over this before? McCain's "maverick" credentials comprise his support for campaign finance reform, or "reform", rather famously called into question in this very campaign, and his taking on ("taking on"), in 2000, the Falwells and Robertsons (here, also famously, his opposition vanished, this time even before the campaign had gotten underway).

Oh, and the Bush Tax Cuts, which he opposed before wanting to make permanent. What's interesting in all this is the degree to which a Press corps which was consumed by the question of Al Gore's cradle-fed presidential asperations, which mused aloud about whether Hillary Clinton--alone among the twenty-seven declared candidates--wasn't "too ambitious" for the Office, swallowed this stuff whole, without ever asking about context. John McCain, campaign finance reformer, was the same John McCain whose Senate career almost ended with Charles Keating's bankroll up his fundament just two years earlier; the Religious Right establishment--which was already sinking, only to be artificially buoyed by eight years of Bush--he "bucked" in 2000 was already in the bag for his opponent. (That IOU, you may recall, was settled when the administration signed over the pink slip to the Justice Department.) This is the same Republican party which was widely imagined to have Culturally goose-stepped itself out of an election at the '92 Convention, and it was the same Year 2000 where the country enjoyed a budget surplus due to the reversal of incontinent tax-cutting. It was also the Republican party which had failed to nominate an avowed "Movement" "Conservative" for two cycles, and where even the beholden dullard George W. was being presented as something else. Which makes those seem, at least, like they could have been carefully crafted positions dating to 1996. Not that I'm saying John McCain, vintage 2000, could not possibly have been the only politician in America whose positions were the result of personal principles, absent any and all electoral calculation. I'm just sayin' that if John McCain ever really was a true Maverick I'm glad he wasn't killed in the long fall off that pedestal.

While alternative history is inherently speculative,

Some say "masturbatory".

a reasonable case can be made that McCain could have won the 2008 Republican nomination even if he had not pandered to Falwell and had not abandoned his fiscal conservatism to compete with Romney on taxes. The victory formula would have been built around McCain's biography, his unorthodox style, his unstinting support for the surge in Iraq and the general feeling that eight years earlier the GOP made a tragic mistake with Bush. In short, McCain could have come out of the GOP primaries prepared to run against Obama as a true maverick rather than a generic Republican railing against socialism

Again, assuming that John McCain 2008 is a vote-pandering election whore, where McCain 2000 was a dewy bride unaware she was about to be ravaged by racist push-polling in South Carolina. We don't. In fact, we confess that to us no one who's remained a Republican over the past three decades has a right to wear virginal white and expect the rest of us to keep a straight face. (It's amusing to see Noonan and Brooks suddenly scruple at a Palin when they kept their party allegiance during and after Pat Buchanan's Convention speech in '92. He was a big audience pleaser, too.) 

Let's recall that in 2005, still warm from that embrace of Bush, McCain surveyed the field and saw...Rudy Guiliani, the Mad Marxist of the GOP. To McCain's right were Bill Frist, who was bound to blow away in the first stiff breeze, and Sam Brownbeck, a religious wingnut who, as it turned out, couldn't even get religious wingnuts to vote for him. McCain steered right. You may, if you wish, believe that it's the first time he'd ever touched a tiller in his life. We don't. We think the idea that there's a "real" John McCain out there who, had he but followed his instincts, would now prove to be Just the Maverick We Need is a bunch of inherent monkey-spanking. And our opinion is one thing; the reality of a modern political campaign, where the first order of business is fund raising, is that he was forced to "move" "right" or get steamrollered. Run against Bush? The only Republican doing that in 2008 was Ron "Crazy Guy with the Lawn Chair and the .50 Caliber Muzzleloader" Paul.

Never mind that any flailing campaign exiting October would have been improved had the campaigner been prescient about its central themes two years previous; McCain's a Republican, he's run as a Republican, and the Republicans of the Goldwater era have no answer to tough economic times, white collar criminality, or international crises that cannot be solved by carpet bombing. He was still ahead in some polls before corporate socialism hit the headlines and Sarah Palin hit the networks. Had he run as the imaginary Buck Stopin' Faux Populist, he'd now be watching Mitt Romney get his balls crushed.

Which brings up the one bit of "alternative history" we think would have vastly improved the McCain campaign. It's the one where someone says, "You'll be seventy-two fucking years old, John. Go live off your wife's money." And he takes the advice.

So, I See You're Voting For 'ChemLawn'

I WAS raking leaves this weekend, and my neighbor was obsessively vacuuming her lawn, as usual--that's not an exaggeration--and we made a little friendly chitter-chatter at the property line, as you will, which generally includes her expression of concern for my mother, and my reply that my own memory isn't exactly sparkling, which is not news to me, but is now somewhat disconcerting seeing as how it's held up against the cold light of serious mental deterioration on a regular basis. And she mentioned that she was approaching the big Five-Oh, and that she and her husband had both noted a disturbing decrease in memory-related mental acuity, to the extent that her husband was now taking...now taking...that...stuff...

And so the two of us spent the next three minutes trapped in a sort of half-tense/half hysterical pre-dotage before I came up with Gingko biloba! I have to admit I felt the glory of triumph. Stuff like that is just a mite too disturbing for real laughs, at least at the time (I knew recounting it would provoke a snort fest in my Poor Wife, which it did); it's like an uncomfortable joke, where the laughter is supposed to be a release, but where the set-up was so over-elaborated that by the end you just felt sorry for everyone involved.

The other Neighbor News was that their daughter, lately licensed to drive, had announced she was joining the Young Democrats. This is apparently one of those grand passages in life which are now accompanied by a tee-shirt, for which she was said to be impatiently waiting. And this means nothing whatsoever until you set it in relief against Dad's Reagan/Bush '84 poster in the garage--framed, it is--and the memory that their Bush/Cheney Double Aught yard sign stayed in place through that horrible autumn and right on through the inauguration. In point of fact I don't remember whether they eventually removed it or it got swept away by a snow plow.  Dad reportedly did not take the news too well.

For comparison's sake, the BushCheney'04 sign went up late and came down early, and this year, nothin'. We're blessed, actually, that this year the signage begins in the next block, or Little Appalachia, as we like to call it, and does not include any of the MITCH signs which are roughly three times the size of the actual governor. Ever the over-compensator. Anyway, the only bit of political theatre we have to view out the picture window every dawn is Old Glory across the street. This spring it went from fixed-staff parade-waver model stuck into a metal holder on a mailbox post, to a Woodstock-cape sized deal on a fifteen foot metal pole, and which, like its predecessor, flies day and night, rain or shine, no lights, no black ribbon compensating for the inability to lower it to half-staff. Nothin'. It never fails that the people most likely to fly the thing are the ones least likely to give a shit about etiquette and respect.

Which I guess is our theme for the day; I just saw an electoral map with Indiana glowing in some odd color. We're a Tossup State. This is treated, in some quarters, particularly the ones where all the barking seems to be coming from, as some sort of sea change--last night, by my unofficial tally, was Day 214 in the Nightly Local News Hairdos Remind Us How Long It's Been Since Indiana Voted Democratic Festival and, really, you try livin' through that and maintaining your sanity--when it should, in a normal world, be treated as an early warning to the other 47 to Just Fucking Run Like Hell. Forty years of voting Republican might seem to some people like a measure of how "Red" the state is, but, if I may but point out, it's actually a measure of how fucking stupid the voters around here are. I'm sorry, really; I'd love to sound all cheery and upbeat an' shit, and Lord knows there's nobody in the country more eager than I to see Republicans Bite It, Big, and Keep On Biting It Every Day, Forever, but I have to be honest. The only time in my lifetime people in Indiana voted for a President who did not immediately turn around and rain shit upon them, steadily, and almost gleefully, is when the guy they voted for lost. Indiana's practically the only Solid Red state in the nation that sends in more in Federal tax dollars than it gets back. It sends reliable pro-Pentagon votes to Congress every two years, and since Reagan took office has seen every single one of its military installations closed and votes in, time and again, the anti-unionists who've solved that little problem by helping ship all the manufacturing jobs out of the country. We're the friggin' Madden Curse of states; y'know, it's just 11 electoral votes or something--I've lost count, but it drops every Census--so assuming Senator Obama doesn't really need 'em I think he should just pass. Maybe make a gift of 'em to McCain, if it comes to that.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it could all be breaking the other way, in the direction of the Increasingly Erratic Express and his aggressively ignorant small-town lunatic of a running mate.

McCain's program, so far as I can tell, is to keep doing the one thing he managed to do well: rile up the base. I'm not sure how that's supposed to translate into more votes, but, hey, it's his campaign. Socialism! It's got that fine, creepy-guy-with-the-overgrown-hedges-and-the-curtains-always-drawn vibe, the guy these people decided, for reasons which are still unclear, was the Gravitational Center of American Political Discourse, after which they managed to go 6-4 in Presidential elections, which convinced them they'd stumbled on some sort of eternal verity.  And the thing that's really remarkable is that McCain spent twenty-five years in Washington, at least half of them as anathema to his own party, and he still had no idea what the base was, which sorta underlines the point that they've been taking them for granted for three decades. Surely somebody somewhere, knowing the sort of cash he had at his disposal, could have sat him down in 2005 and performed the tricky "scrolling" maneuver for him while making him read a page from Little Green Footballs. "Are you honestly cynical enough about America to imagine that if you're required to appeal to these people just to win the nomination you'll do so? And still pretend America is worth governing?" 

And the funny thing about that is, it's difficult to believe, watching Councilwoman Palin's case of premature Norma Desmonditis--swear to god, every half-witted "celebrity" in this country is now convinced the ideal career arc is 1) achieving 15 minutes of fame; 2) the last ten minutes, when everything you touch turns to shit; and 3) your reprise as Hogan Knows Best--that this is what McCain's primary supporters thought they were getting in a candidate. They had every opportunity to vote for Sarah Palin in the primaries, even if she did look like Fred Dumbo Thompson. Ed Rollins said, over the weekend, that Palin "would be the most popular Republican when this thing's over". Here's hopin', Ed. Here's hopin'.

Which brings us back, in an odd way, to the neighbors. He's not a Palin religious wacko; more like a Libruls Want To Take Away My Guns and Macho Bluster As a Substitute for Learning Anything About World Affairs guy. And the guns, so far as I know, are for duck hunting, which he doesn't do much of. I have no idea what he thinks of Palin; I don't discuss politics, religion, or popular movies in polite society. But he's got that same aggressive intellectual sloth that's so common among a generation (or more) of Americans who decided, or were taught, that if the facts were against them then there was something wrong with the facts. And his wife told me that, when their daughter announced her new party affiliation he made her call her (paternal) grandfather and tell him, on the grounds, I take it, that you had to go back at least a generation to find a wingnut with any experience in talking to someone he disagrees with.

"Edumund Burke": Short For "I Had A College Crush On Ayn Rand And Now I'm Embarrassed To Admit It"

David Brooks, "Ceding the Center". October 26

There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom.

But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility.

JEEZ Louise, will somebody give this guy a grant, already? Or a sinecure at a nice leafy private school where he can find a ready-made audience between the ages of 18 and 18-3/4 to impress with this shit?

This tendency began with Alexander Hamilton, who created a vibrant national economy so more people could rise and succeed. It matured with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Republicans, who created the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act to give people the tools to pursue their ambitions. It continued with Theodore Roosevelt, who busted the trusts to give more Americans a square deal.

Members of this tradition have one foot in the conservatism of Edmund Burke. They understand how little we know or can know and how much we should rely on tradition, prudence and habit. They have an awareness of sin, of the importance of traditional virtues and stable institutions. They understand that we are not free-floating individuals but are embedded in thick social organisms.

But members of this tradition also have a foot in the landscape of America, and share its optimism and its Lincolnian faith in personal transformation. Hamilton didn’t seek wealth for its own sake, but as a way to enhance the country’s greatness and serve the unique cause America represents in the world.

Members of this tradition are Americanized Burkeans, or to put it another way, progressive conservatives.

Or, to put it yet a third way, Full of It.

At this juncture we may well stop and remind ourselves that Brooks has worn his Milton Friedmania "conversion" to "conservatism" on his sleeve for so long it can be read in outline, like the ghost of a lost back pocket on an old pair of jeans. We might, while we're at it, comb the Brooks' oeuvre for further examples of what, to put it yet another way, might be described as The Wholly Illusory Noblesse Oblige Faction of Movement "Conservatism", last seen insisting on George W. Bush's "compassion", if you can remember that far back. But to save time, let's just estimate that it dates to, approximately, the moment it became clear that the second major financial market scandal-slash-meltdown perpetrated by the second two-term "conservative" administration in a row had wiped out John McCain's chances already slim chances.  Say, last month.

I mean, it's not that I don't recall the (now dim echoes of) Reaganaut "rising tide lifts all boats" routine. It's just that I also remember no one on Brooks' side feeling obligated to check the water level periodically. Maybe I'm wrong; god knows my digestion is too delicate for a steady diet of the man, but while the middle class sank into the lower over the past thirty years--as a result of his party's, and his ideology's, actions--I don't recall Brooks evincing concern over anything but its lawn care styles and chain restaurant offerings, and he apparently didn't care enough about either of those to actually get close enough to look. It seemed to be enough for these people that they were theoretically in favor of social mobility, which allowed them to stand by and watch as their devotion to Limited Government beat the shit out of their belief in Energetic Activity Supporting Economic Fairness. As long as Republicans were winning elections, dedication to social mobility was encompassed by the insistence that in the event any American who owned his own garage managed to concoct the next Hewlett-Packard he would not be overly bothered by a tax on capital gains.

I gotta say I chewed this thing over for two or three hours last night as it spooled in the background: to write about David Brooks invoking Edmund Burke yet again, or just give up reading him altogether and hope he goes away in the opening months of an Obama administration? Of the latter, the man's a hopeless liar, same as the rest of his ilk, same way it was before he was momentarily blinded on his way to Damascus. But then this business of simply apssuming an intellectual sheen via the dropping of names of dead guys no one's read in a century makes him overdue for the traditional, reliable, and prudent application of Tar and Feathers. If the appeals to Burke are about as convincing as the Reaganauts' Adam Smith neckwear used to be, the appropriation of Hamilton, whose dedication to a strong national government was anathema as recently as four weeks ago, and who formerly was admired, to the extent that he was, mostly because his congenital monarchism matched their own. To claim that Hamilton, who was shot to death at a time when there wasn't a single smokestack in the Americas, when a "corporation" was an entity created by a charter, whose primary purpose was the protection of the general population from its caprices, was some sort of 18th century Get Rich in Real Estate huckster is just laughable, or would be if it weren't so perfectly indicative of what these types have been reduced to.

Wait, I take that back. It 's still laughable.

Even more so, of course, is Brooks' idea that, because he's not quite as bat-shit crazy (in print) as some other members of his party, he represents the great middle way of American politics, or the ludicrous frame that one can inject some reductionist version of oneself into the election of 1800 and thereby claim one-third ownership in the foundation of American politics. As always it just sorta escapes the notice of these types that women, minorities, and even white males with insufficient land holdings need not apply; let alone anyone familiar with the principles of genetics, the kinetic theory of gasses, or the electric light. Then again, Hamilton was probably the most abolitionist of Founding Fathers, having viewed it at its worst on St. Croix, and the contribution of the Quakers before, during, and after the Revolution can hardly be minimized. Supposing we connect that with Tom Paine,with William Lloyd Garrison, with the Anti-Rent Riots, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, the Grange, the Labor Movement, and Martin Luther King? Looks a bit more, well, mainstream than a handful of racist plutocrats in the 1950s who decided some 19th century British Parliamentarian opposed the fluoridation of water.

Olio

Once a year we salute the Madwoman of Brockton Manor for planting grapes everywhere. The rest of the year we curse her.

• So at 82 Alan Greenspan thinks he may have spotted a tiny flaw in Objectivism? What's up next, getting his Learner's Permit? Can we just put Mr. and Mrs. Greenspan on an ice floe somewhere and call the whole thing even?

• Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were trying to nap: I think I'm the last person who could be accused of Obama worship or overreacting to the whole "Indiana is in Play!" routine, but like Oscar Levant, who knew Doris Day before she became a virgin, I've been enduring Indiana politics since before Dick Lugar was a moderate, and it's hard to deny there's something going on here. That something included 35,000 people turning out to see him on short notice yesterday. Asked to explain what that meant, veteran Channel 8 political reporter Jim Shella replied that it didn't mean anything unless they came out to vote.

• Is it just incipient Slate syndrome, or are the smart shoppers at The XX Factor trying to set Women's issues back fifty years?

"Whoever gets that shantung silk Valentino jacket secondhand, will not do it justice the way Sarah did in her convention speech." --Bonnie Goldstein

"Maybe Sarah Palin is the first one to own the sex appeal and use it as her weapon. Everytime you read about the crowds of men around her, they seem much less predator than prey, just awed, awed by her..." --Hanna Rosin

"I'm supposed to be doing real work, but can I get a show of hands from everybody who thinks looking good is a problem? Me neither; this jacket in particular I could really go for." --Melinda Henneberger

So then WaPo decides to treat readers to a live chat with Henneberger and
Nina Shen Rastogi, which Henneberger kicks off by saying, "My first reaction, too, was hey, I'm enjoying the fashion show—and if someone handed me a credit card and pointed me towards Neiman's, there's a zero percent chance I'd come back with a few durable things from Target."

Now, this is not just a reporter, a political reporter, but one who has in the past written about John Edward's real haircuts and Bill Clinton's fictional ones (as though they were real, natch). But she doesn't get the Palin story initially because she's groovin' on the looks. Later the reality kicks in:

"So I don't blame her for the clothes, but I do blame her for dividing us into elites and non-elites, real America and fake America. And yes, it is hypocritical to talk about "Wasilla Main Street values''—and then favor Escada and Valentino."

By the way, Questioner, your spokesperson for eliminating this horrid divisiveness is the woman who, the day before, had recounted the Parisian salesclerk's shock at her frivolous, euro-backed clothing purchase of a couple weeks back, the one she made to drown her sorrows over her stock portfolio.

I've got nothing against an interest in fashion, or NASCAR, or live-chats at WaPo; but, at minimum, I think we can expect any adult who decides to drink deep thereabouts to acknowledge that he or she has at least heard about the dangers of chronic over-bibbing. And fashion, rather famously, has to carry with it some realization that the whole thing is ultimately dependent upon bright shininess catching the eye of the dedicated serial consumer, if not the terminally superficial. Okay, so it's easy to denounce this when you're old and nobody wants to look at you anyway, but that doesn't explain how someone who thought John Edwards' haircuts were important enough to write about in 2007--and now insists that his sin was charging them to his campaign, which she didn't bother mentioning at the time--initially passes on Sarah Palin's considerably more egregious acts because that jacket induces keyboard drooling.

And look; it may well be that one's fashion sense ossifies along with the rest of him, but in absolute terms, well, you've gotta be fucking kiddin' me. I can't look at Sarah Palin without seeing Edith Prickley, except Edith dressed with élan and Palin looks like she's trying to one-up everybody else at church, or remind the fill-in weather reporter who the real star is.

• The best political columnist in America (caution, it's really Peggy Noonan):

Not a single poll has Mr. McCain ahead. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls as I write, rounded off, is Obama 50%, McCain 43%. Actually Mr. Obama has 50.1%, and if that is true and holds, it would make him the first Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter to break 50%. But I find myself thinking of what that 43% means. It's a big number, considering that this is the worst Republican year in generations. Amid two wars, a deep economic crisis, a fractured base, too much cynicism, and a campaign with the wind not at its back but head on in its face—with all of that working against Mr. McCain, 43% of the American people say, right now, in these polls, they are for him. And there are a significant number of undecideds. Four years ago about 122 million people voted. Forty-three percent of 122 million is 52 million people, more or less. A huge group, one too varied to generalize about because it includes flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities, and many others.

Fer cryin' fuckin' out loud, it's one thing to expect that even flat on their faces, in a ditch, inhaling 35º water which has run off from some chemically-overdosed suburban patriot lawn, Republicans would insist they're still a secret majority and offer to compromise with the rest of the country provided it's on their terms. But, y'know, when Jimmy Carter polled 41% in 1980--as a veritable Carter clone named John Anderson was pulling nearly 8%--the Noonans of the world announced the next day they'd Won a fucking Revolution. McCain has all but agreed to die in office and let his gun-totin' religious crackpot of a running mate take over, all for the sake of rallying his base. If he polls less than 50% it's a sea-change. If he polled 43 it would be a renunciation at least the equal of Carter's, if with less ideological fervor behind it. Either play by the same rules or get th' fuck out of the sandbox. Preferably the latter.

Dine With The Tories, But Shop With The Elitist Un-Americans

I THINK we've done a reasonably good job of ignoring Councilwoman Palin since her fifteen minutes ended; you didn't even hear a word outta me when she visited our very white neighbors to the North, Hamilton County, USA, last Friday, and stopped in the actual capital city of Indiana long enough to make a self-deprecating crack about her Couric interview to the guy from the ABC affiliate, after mentioning for the four-hundredth time that afternoon that her favorite movie was Hoosiers. Of course, that "self-deprecating" business describes the form of her comment ("one of my finest moments!") and not the intention; they don't do self-deprecation in the witch-expelling and nonsense-syllable circuit, and even Mike Huckabee, who's had long practice at it and is pretty good, could never shake that accompanying look which says, "Sure, I'm imperfect, but you're the one going to Hell," thus undermining the whole pitch. Mostly because that look is always fucking there. This is why you never hear, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for the man who puts the Levity in Leviticus..." or see anyone being billed as the Snake Handler's Answer to Woody Allen.

Anyhow, Palin's passé; all she has left now are people who think things actually get funnier the more times Saturday Night Live does them, but the concept of Sarah Palin, or the circumstances of her Elevation, are not, and this is why we mention this...

The Republican National Committee paid more than $150,000 for clothing, makeup and accessories in September that apparently went to Gov. Sarah Palin and her family, according to an article on Politico.com.

That included $9,447.71 to Macy’s, $789.72 to Barneys New York, $5,102.71 to Bloomingdales; $49,425.74 to Saks Fifth Avenue and $4,902.45 to Atelier.

In one heavyweight shopping trip in early September, $75,062.63 was spent at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, a host city of the Republican National Convention.
The expenditures were listed on the R.N.C.’s monthly financial disclosure forms.

...while studiously avoiding saying anything along the lines of Huh, I Thought She Shopped At Glacier Bob's Muskox Fur and Duct Tape Couturier Pour Elle, or Seed Sacks Iz Us, Or Whut-Mart, like the rest of Real America. Rather, we'd like to remind Joe Six Pack, via IRS Publication 529:

Work Clothes and Uniforms

You can deduct the cost and upkeep of work clothes if the following two requirements are met:

•You must wear them as a condition of your 
employment, trade or business

•The clothes are not suitable for everyday wear.
It is not enough that you wear distinctive clothing.
The clothing must be specifically required by your
employer. Nor is it enough that that you do not, in fact,
wear your work clothes away from work. The clothing must
not be suitable for taking the place of your regular clothing.

So that, assuming there's some CPA somewhere who thinks Joe looks just fine in that bright orange golf shirt his entrepreneurial superior made him buy ten of, he can't even deduct the damn thing.  

As with all advice given in these parts, it's your own damn lookout if you're stupid enough to take it without checking with someone who knows what he's talking about. And having said that, we'd like to suggest the Palin family turn all that stuff back in to the RNC in a couple weeks, when it's no longer of any use, or be prepared to pay taxes on it, or secede from the Union, if they haven't already. Hey, it's their lookout; we just remember that they have a little trouble remembering to return other people's property, although maybe that's limited to taxpayer funds.

While We're At It, Let's Sink The Doughnut

SCOTT C. brings us another episode of The Little Boy Who Overcame Everything But Chronic Flatulence, Based On A True Story. Yesterday finds Jonah G. using the same pastry-based metaphor, on the very same day, as his preferred presidential candidate.  Ladies and Gentlemen: The Growing Pie.

"[Senator Obama is] more interested in controlling who gets your piece of pie than in growing the pie."

--McCain

Millions of Americans...don't see the economy as a pie, whereby your slice can only get bigger if someone else's gets smaller.

--Goldberg

My Poor Wife was at the dining room table, doing grades, when the McCain clip came on the "news" last night, and I mistook her reaction for evidence she'd gotten one of those Dove chocolates from the candy dish lodged in her windpipe. (Her entire family laughs like that, by the way; thank God she's the only one of 'em with a sense of humor).  She finally calmed down enough--I was in the same room by this time, having dashed in prepared to Heimlich her--to sputter, "Did he really just say what I think he just said? 'Grow a pie'? And she's an art teacher.

Jonah, of course, should be the first pundit in America to realize that pie only gets smaller.

Okay, to be clear about it, maybe they say this all the time. It's certainly redolent of the thieves' cant of the American boardroom, or the jargon of middle management catamites; maybe it's heiress-argot, trickled down. And I have no idea who said it first, the Doughy Pantload or Senator Queeg. Was it Bill Clinton who kept running around talking about "growing" the economy? At least he had growing up dirt-poor as an excuse.

Once I realized my darling was in no danger of choking I was reminded that these are the people who not only presume to tell you American education is failing, but who claim to hold the tools needed to fix it.

My second thought was, well, I remember the odd hour after high school had ended for the day spent combing the ugly green-and-puke-colored shag carpeting in my room for lost nuggets of hashish, so I can at least sympathize that these guys are out of bumper-sticker slogans, regardless of how much I've longed for the day.

But upon reflection, and with no intention of bothering to solve the central mystery of its origins, I think what's really at work here is the behind-the-scenes pie-knife fight for control of what will be left of the Republican party come November 5. It's the Dements versus the Aments. 

Moderate Republicans: The Real Real America

David Brooks, "Patio Man Revisited". October 20

Richard Cohen, "Party Like It's 1964". October 21

...the GOP, under Rove and his disciples in the McCain campaign, has not only driven out ethnic and racial minorities but a vast bloc of voters who, quite bluntly, want nothing to do with Sarah Palin. For moderates everywhere, she remains the single best reason to vote against McCain.

--Cohen

For all the talk of plumbers and investment bankers, populists and elitists, Patio Man is still at the epicenter of national politics. He is the quintessential suburban American, the service economy worker, the guy who wears khakis to work each day, with the security badge on the belt clip around his waist.

--Who Else?

EVEN with Life's minor marvels it can be one thing to believe it and quite another to actually feast your eyes on it.

Let's take, to use a randomly-selected example, local teevee news. Now, my local teevee news sucks. It has sucked for thirty-some years, and even at that it has managed quantifiable leaps of suckiness which were frankly shocking to the young adult of the 1970s who imagined, when all this sucking began, that it could get no worse. And I'm going to assume that your local news sucks, too, on the grounds that either your Market is smaller than Indianapolis, in which case it is most likely peopled with even denser, even less talented, and probably even-more-desperate-to-move-on-to-anywhere-else career teleprompter readers, or your Market is larger, with better readers and more teeth, and maybe individual theme music, but in that case you are the Model these lesser markets are based on, and that, really, cannot be good.

Now, we hate to keep bringing this up, but the airwaves belong to YOU, exclamation point, and they were sold out from under YOU by, three guesses, the Reagan administration, on the grounds that if there was a big profit in it for wealthy people it must be a really great idea. The astute Reader may have noticed a quick jump of a decade (whaddya tryin' to pull, Riley?), but not to worry: the "market" had, as its idolaters like to point out over and over and over, already done the mule work on its own, like magic; by the time Reagan was in position to sell your birthright, Capitalism, despite its New Deal fetters, had managed to bring you Happy Talk News, wherein the old-fashioned idea of a summation of the day's events as read by knowledgeable reporters was replaced by empty bullshit as sounded out phonetically on air by empty bullshitters. And this was followed, perhaps inevitably, by Barbara Walters, wherein the very concept of news was subjected to cruel mockery, and where, for that matter, cruel mockery didn't fare much better.

But even the sour-stomached long-time observer could only watch in wonder as rising gas prices and falling home values at the tail end of the Naughts meant the long-forgotten real world slapped the second generation of these talking coiffures into speaking about real news. The results, predictably, were what you'd expect if, near the end of his life, Elvis had suddenly been required to run an Army obstacle course. Not good, and not pretty. The truly entertaining thing, if you're big on schadenfreude, is watching people who've been conditioned to two facial responses, dour for murder, child abuse, and tax increases, peppy as a high-school cheerleader in her 16th birthday BMW for everything else, try to arrange themselves around a suddenly complex world where survival, not Survivor, was the Top Story.

I grant that some of this is a personal, or chemical reaction on my part; I wouldn't be caught dead shilling something unless a) I was paid some ghastly amount to do so, eliminating the requirement that I ever do so again, and b) I was as goddamned enthusiastic about it as I was paid to pretend to be. And here are, roughly, twenty-five people per night (it takes a team of three just to report the weather for ninety-minutes now, and that's assuming it's cloudless and mild) per channel who do so for a six-figure salary, or the potential for a six-figure salary, and recognition at the local bistro. Which right off the bat puts them on one side of an argument which we not only refuse to have in this country, but which their side tries its damnedest to avoid even acknowledging.

It hasn't just been limited to a simple matter of how to compose one's face, either. The locals haven't quite been able to completely shake the vague suspicion that they ought to be selling global financial market collapse as a swell entrepreneurial opportunity for the aspiring repo man or soup kitchen operator. The same week the Bush administration was pushing the Paulson plan as a Take It or Leave It and Die proposition, Channel 8 offered tips for the aspiring buyer of foreclosed mortgages (#3: Don't back over any widows or orphans on your way out of the driveway. Everybody's got a camera these days.).

So you'll simply have to forgive me if I don't believe Richard Cohen is unaware of this, or if I think David Brooks is too fucking callous to care, or that either of them really believes in, let alone imagines he speaks for, some sort of über-majority of the Mild Suburban Reaganite Mind. It's another argument which pretends there is no argument. It's the pretense that Middle America as painted by Norman Rockwell, Ronald Reagan, and cadres of television news producers cowering from right-wing hate mail for forty years is the real Middle America, and it's told here by a couple of guys who have no frickin' idea what it's really like, nor feel any compunction to learn, even as they write columns--and books!--explaining it to people who do. Richard Cohen is old enough to remember the Civil Rights movement, meaning he's old enough to remember Bull Connor's attack dogs ripping at children. Whether he chooses to remember is not our problem. David Brooks is at least old enough to remember Willie Horton, and "liberal" enough to have objected, it's said, at least, to his party's gay-bashing for votes. And they're both old enough to have earned paychecks for bashing Bill Clinton, and later paychecks for supporting the Iraq invasion and denouncing Irrational Bush Hatred.

So I suppose we might note the sort of good fortune each man is blessed with in that America agrees with him, only for less money. You make your own Luck, as the saying goes. But we're a little less convinced by this Sarah Palin, OMG! How Did These People Get Into The Republican Party? routine. Because, y'know, we actually walk the streets of Middle America, where they're hardly a surprise.  What we'd really like to know is: is it not time that these two, and every other impacted pundit harrying the national gums, were yanked out? Do they really have anyone left to lie to? We keep returning to Lenin's famous dictum about Capitalism selling him the rope it'd be hung with; we keep thinking that had he lived into the modern era of man-made fibers he would have added, "and they'll keep insisting the damn thing is silk when it's obviously cheap-ass polyester, right up until it strangles 'em."